Offering the best of “real” New Zealand

By Julian Wood

We’ve been rightly proud of our country’s unity in response to the Christchurch mosque attacks. But in the weeks following…

Think Big 2.0: The Provincial Growth Fund risks turning into a fiasco

By Alex Penk

This article was written by Alex Penk and Julian Wood, and first published on The Spinoff on 26 February, on…

Media coverage of the launch of “A Risk Worth Taking” Policy Paper

By Alex Penk

On the morning of the release of our analysis of the Provincial Growth Fund, our report was featured on the…

Making the Provincial Growth Fund a risk worth taking

By Julian Wood

The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) represents a once in a generation opportunity to support a sustainable future for New Zealand’s…

Regional Development Policy Paper – A Risk Worth Taking

By Julian Wood

One year into the $3B Provincial Growth Fund, Maxim Institute’s new research A Risk Worth Taking – Ensuring the Provincial…

Losing All Blacks nothing to fear

By Julian Wood

In a surprise move, a group of the top 1 percent of male New Zealand income earners are appealing for…

Sabotaging the lifts in New Zealand’s tower of wealth

By Julian Wood

If you haven’t seen the 2018 Side Eye Inequality Tower by Toby Morris and Max Rashbrooke, it’s well worth a…

Irresponsible lenders on borrowed time

By Julian Wood

While borrowing money at an annualised interest rate of up to 693% wouldn’t appear at the top of anyone’s wish…

The $64,000 question

By Julian Wood

As my colleague discussed in a recent column, we have to be careful that our desire to punish offenders and…

Taking the Right Risks for the regions – Newsroom column

By Alex Penk

At the launch of our Taking the Right Risks policy paper, Alex Penk and Julian Wood co-authored a column for…

Time to take a risk for the regions – Newsroom column

By Alex Penk

To lay out an explanation for the recommendations in our Taking the Right Risks policy paper on regional development, Alex Penk…

Regional Development Policy Paper: Taking the Right Risks

By Julian Wood

Our previous work on regional development laid out the evidence that large parts of New Zealand are facing a 30 year wave…

Planning to take the right risks for our regions

By Julian Wood

New Zealand’s Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has a problem. He has three billion dollars and three years to change…

New Zealanders in harm’s way

While we may not have poisonous snakes and spiders in New Zealand, the risks of our natural surroundings are becoming…

Back to the Trade Wars?

By Julian Wood

It seems the Trade Wars are back on. Battle-lines are being draw up like the musket wars of old, with…

“No.8 wire” ethic is not enough

By Julian Wood

While New Zealanders are proud of the “number 8 wire” ethos that represents our ingenuity and resourcefulness, our actual productivity…

Cigarettes becoming too hot to handle for dairies

By Julian Wood

Cigarettes, while not worth their weight in gold, are now worth one and a half times their weight in silver,…

Getting fit to compete in the global game

By Julian Wood

While political and economic “change” is on everyone’s lips, we need to be clear about our current situation, and what…

Read our column on The Spinoff and RNZ

By Alex Penk

This week, Alex Penk and Julian Wood’s column Triumph or disaster? A guide to the minimum wage increase featured on The…

Getting real about the cost of water

By Julian Wood

I spent 10 years in China working on a beef cattle farm, and a fair amount of that time was…